‘I was drowning in dark water of tsunami when my neighbour saved me’

Qurratun Akyun was only six years old when the 65ft tsunami engulfed her neighbourhood in the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh.

But 10 years after the disaster she can still remember almost drowning in dark, debris-strewn waters inside her local mosque, before being pulled to safety by neighbour Andri Alfizar Gapi.

Gapi had first saved Akyun only minutes before, scooping her up from the road near her home as the tsunami bore down on their neighbourhood of Jeulingke from three directions.

Despite being so young, Akyun, who lost her mother in the tsunami, still feels the trauma. Now 16, she is reminded of it every time she sees her mother’s photo.

Revisiting the place where Gapi, 35, picked her up off the road, she said: “I remember when I was drowning.

“I was at primary school, I still remember, I was scared. I’m at senior school now, I feel so sad because I lost my mum in the tsunami... When I look at my mother’s photo I remember the tsunami. We found the family photographs in the muddy water.”

On Boxing Day, which was the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the world remembered the victims of the disaster that killed 230,000 people across 14 countries.

Despite Indonesia’s huge death toll — more than 165,000 people in Aceh province lost their lives — Akyun and Gapi’s experience is one of the many remarkable stories of hope and survival to emerge from the tragedy.

Gapi was standing in the road next to Akyun — whose nickname is Ratu — as the wave approached Jeulingke. He remembers her mother standing nearby, screaming her daughter’s name. In the chaos, she could not see her or hear Gapi’s cries as he tried to tell her that Akyun was with him.

When he saw the wave he had no choice but to pick up his six-year-old neighbour and run as fast as he could in a bid to save both their lives.

Gapi, a tour guide and artist, said: “My mother and brother saw the water coming and they suddenly left us like that, my mother shouting, ‘Run for your life!’

“After that I didn’t see the water coming from that way and I said to all the people, ‘Don’t panic’. I knew it was a tsunami but I didn’t know what was coming. I saw Ratu’s mother calling for her from a distance of about 10 metres. I called out to tell her she was with me but she just screamed and didn’t move. I decided to carry her away because I saw the water coming from the north...Ratu’s mother didn’t try to run at all because she was trying to find Ratu. She didn’t care about her own safety.”

Describing the tsunami, he said: “It looked like a wave but unlike anything you see on TV. Its dark water made houses disappear just like that. If we’d stayed in a second-floor house we would have died.

“Then I carried Ratu away and ran so fast I passed everyone. I heard the water, it was so loud, like a jet plane sound.”

Gapi ran into the mosque to seek shelter but it was too full of people to get upstairs.

“We were hit by the water on the first floor,” he said. “Water came and it swirled and I lost Ratu for a few seconds. I couldn’t find her. I tried to dive again and reach out and I could touch her hair and pulled her out. She was suffering, coughing from swallowing water. It was so dark...

“Suddenly my foot touched something — the rope that separates genders in the mosque — and I used my foot to push and my hand to push the ceiling so I didn’t have to swim... We couldn’t see anything.”

After 10 minutes in complete darkness, light emerged and the pair were rescued, able to get to the second floor and escape the next wave.

Gapi then spent the day desperately examining corpses to try to find his 65-year-old mother, Damriah Lubis. She was reunited with him that evening, the only mother from their street to survive the tsunami. He said today, like many, he is focused on the future but was haunted by the experience for some time. “In the beginning I used to wake up in the middle of the night if I heard a voice. When I was sleeping and I heard a voice or a car engine I would suddenly jump out of the bed.”

Amiruddin, from the Lhoong village of Sungko Mulot, where nearly a quarter of the population died, also has a miraculous story of survival.

The 52-year-old village leader thought it was the end of the world when he got caught on the crest of the tsunami. But he managed to escape after around 20 minutes in the fast-flowing waters.

Amiruddin said he was in the paddy fields when he heard something that sounded “like a bomb”. “Just after I heard that sound I saw that lots of monkeys and pigs were running away from the area. Because I saw them run I felt worried and went back to the village.

“But on the way back I got caught by the wave. Then when I saw that wave I went back towards the paddy field but then I was on the crest of the wave.

“I fell down and sat with my legs outstretched and the water took me to another place. Suddenly I got hit by trees, I got a big gash on my foot, then the wave made me somersault through the water. I was in the wave for about 20 minutes.

“I’d never seen anything before it happen like this. I took it as the end of the world. I also remembered my friend who was also in the paddy field and thought, ‘Is he still alive or not?’. Everybody here thought it was the last day. My friend is also still alive.”

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